Databases and auraDB

Engines

auraPanel manages MariaDB (10.11, 11.4 or 11.8) and PostgreSQL (16, 17 or 18). Choose them at install time or add them later under Services → Packages, which adds the vendor repository and starts the service. A site's Databases tab offers only the engines that are installed.

Both engines listen on loopback only. Application users are granted access from localhost and 127.0.0.1; nothing is exposed to the network and the firewall does not open the database ports. Remote database access is not a panel feature.

Create a database

1. Open the site, then its Databases tab, then Add database.
2. Choose the engine, a database name and a user. Names start with a letter and use letters, digits and underscores, up to 64 characters. A random password is pre-filled.
3. Create. The database and user are created and bound to this site.

Connection details for applications on the same server:

One-click applications create their own database. WordPress gets wp_ plus a random suffix; other applications use the site's user name with hyphens replaced by underscores.

Import and export

From a shell on the server. The domain can be omitted when you are inside the site's directory.

apcli db list example.com
apcli db create example.com --engine postgres --name app_db --user app_user
apcli db import example.com dump.sql.gz            # .sql, .sql.gz or .sql.bz2
apcli db export example.com --name app_db          # writes app_db-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.sql.gz
apcli db export example.com --name app_db --plain --out - > app_db.sql
apcli db password example.com --name app_db

Imports detect gzip and bzip2 by their magic bytes and rewrite DEFINER clauses to the destination user, so a dump taken elsewhere loads without editing. PostgreSQL exports use --no-owner --no-acl so they restore cleanly under a different role.

Administer data in auraDB

auraDB is the panel's database administration screen, included with every licence. Press Open next to a database and it opens already connected; no credentials to paste. It offers a schema browser, table detail (columns, indexes, foreign keys, triggers), a row grid with inline editing and per-column filters, a SQL editor with an EXPLAIN inspector, an ER diagram, query history and saved queries, user and privilege management, and server status.

Every action in the interface generates SQL and shows it to you before it runs, and every statement passes the same checks:

• Roles from viewer to owner decide who may write, run DDL or manage grants.
• Mass writes (an UPDATE or DELETE without WHERE, TRUNCATE) always require a second confirmation.
• Forbidden statements that read or write server files (LOAD_FILE, INTO OUTFILE, COPY … FROM PROGRAM, pg_read_file) cannot be authorised by any role.
• A connection marked read-only cannot be written to, even by an owner.

Defaults: queries time out after 30 seconds, results are capped at 10,000 rows or 50 MiB and marked as truncated, and one query runs at a time per user and connection. Everything auraDB does is recorded in a hash-chained audit file at /var/lib/aurapanel/auradb/audit.ndjson as well as the panel's audit log.

A standalone auradb binary, for servers without the panel, is published with each release and documented separately; it is not part of the .deb.

Delete a database

Deleting drops the database and its dedicated user immediately and irreversibly. Export first, or rely on a recent backup, which always includes the site's databases.

Common messages